


there is indeed a light (strike a match, and let it burn)

by finnpoerey



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic or Romantic Cuddling, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sharing a Bed, Spoilers, it works in all the ways, really stevenat can be brotp or otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnpoerey/pseuds/finnpoerey
Summary: hahaha so im taking nat's death well :))))))





	there is indeed a light (strike a match, and let it burn)

They don't sleep alone after that. Make it a rule. It doesn't matter if Thanos isn't going to snap his fingers again. Nothing is certain, especially not life, especially not keeping your family. She can't even pretend not to feel for them as family.

So they don't sleep alone. She tucks into Steve's stupidly warm and comforting biceps every night, and puts her head on his chest, and his heartbeat lulls her to sleep - _I'm here, I'm alive, you're here, you're alive._

It's also a preemptive strategy for when nightmares strike, because they do, and every night, of varying intensity, one of them wakes up at least once every night.

It's not like they have somewhere to be.

They wake when they wake, and they go over the ever growing list of the dead, count their losses. They search for Thanos, deep space scans, satellites - Rhodey goes up and boosts some of the Stark satellites' range. Pepper does smart things beyond Natasha's comprehension every day, and desperately waits, and waits, and waits for a message from Tony. 

They all do.

Thor wears an expression of guilt every day. She knows he doesn't sleep anymore. Like it wasn't enough for him to lose his mother, and his father, and his brother, and -  
Bruce stays in the lab. Mostly cries. She doesn't blame him. Everyone is seconds from tears at all times now.

Steve lost his two best friends - one of them for the third time - and still does his best to be the glue, and hold them all together. He cries himself to sleep. She feels the tremors in his shoulders at night. He must not have learned how to truly silent cry, or he'd be softly saying _"Hey"_ every night and carefully cupping the back of her neck. 

So they don't sleep alone.

Except for the times when Steve heads to bed first.

"I'll be there in a minute," Natasha says softly, watching him hover in the doorway, pages and pages of confirmed "vanished" - as they had taken to calling those dusted - that had come in just that morning.

Steve in his soft shirt and plaid pajama pants looks back at her carefully, a little furrow forming between his brows.

"Okay," is all he says, but there is an unspoken _don't be long, come to bed soon_ in his tone and gaze.

She only smiles, a sorrowful, half-hearted thing, the only smile she can manage nowadays.

And then she is dozing off, and then she is waking up, throwing herself into the floor and tearing into Steve's room, because all she can see is Steve turning to ash and dust right before her eyes, and she is all that is left -  
Steve is solid and warm and* alive *when she throws herself onto his chest, cupping his face with one hand, fisting her hand into his shirtsleeve with the other. 

Steve wakes as suddenly as she does, moving to throw her off of him, but she barely budges, shuddering with sobs as Steve realizes who she is. He doesn't hesitate to bring her close, closer to him, one hand warm and steady against her neck, and the other heavy and comforting around her waist as she straddles his waist and buries her face into his shoulder, smearing snot and tears into it.

Steve says not a word, and she feels the tiny tremors in his shoulders that signal his own tears as he strokes the back of her head. 

"How can we go on?" she finds herself sobbing, muffled, into his shirt. "How-"

She chokes on her own tears and tries to get closer to Steve. She thinks she'd like to crawl into his chest cavity and live there next to his righteous, beating heart.

Steve swallows, and then again, before saying thickly,

"I'm not sure we can."

Steve Rogers is hopeless. She hates Thanos for making him this. Just another mark on the miles long lost, then.

"C'mere," he says in that soft voice, and cradles her to his chest, tucking her kneed up on one side of him so she lay perpendicular across his chest. She feels so small. Just s scared child, hiding from thunder.

Except - thunder doesn't steal lives. Thunder is all talk.

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha so im taking nat's death well :))))))


End file.
